Political Science

The liar’s paradox, as it is often called, is a fitting subject for our time. For those not familiar with the paradox, it was introduced to me by the historian Gordon Prange when I was a young Navy enlisted man attending the University of Maryland. He introduced the paradox to me as a comedic rejoinder to the charge of a certain bias in history that he considered to be without merit. He stated it this way: “I heard from a Cretan that all Cretans are liars.”

The origin of this form of the liar’s paradox has many roots. It is discussed as a philosophical conundrum by Aristotle in ancient Greece as well as by Cicero in Rome. A version of it appears in the Christian New Testament and it was a source of study in Europe during the Middle Ages.

When I have introduced the paradox in a social setting and asked for a resolution to it by the uninitiated, usually a long conversation ensues. The usual approach is as a bi-polar proposition, accepting certain assumptions from the construction of the sentence, that is, if the Cretan is lying then all Cretans tell the truth which cannot be the case, but if the Cretan is telling the truth then he is lying, but he could not be telling the truth since all Cretans lie…and the circular contradiction goes on ad infinitum.

But there is a solution to the paradox and what it requires is thinking about the Cretan and breaking free of bi-polar thinking, which we often call, colloquially, “thinking in black and white.”

The solution.

The assumption in the paradox is that the Cretan in question can speak for all Cretans. This assumption could be false. Thus not all Cretans are liars and, thus, the Cretan in question is making a false statement. Furthermore, the Cretan making the assertion is not necessarily a liar–the individual could just be mistaken. We can test the “truthiness” of what the Cretan has said by testing other Cretans on a number of topics and seeing if they are simply ignorant, uninformed, or truly liars on all things.

Furthermore, there is a difference between something being a lie and a not-lie. Baked into our thinking by absolutist philosophies, ideologies, and religions is black and white thinking that clouds our judgement. A lie must have intent and be directed to misinform, misdirect, or to cloud a discussion. There are all kinds of lies and many forms of not-lies. Thus, the opposite of “all Cretans are liars” is not that “all Cretans are honest” but that “some Cretans are honest and some are not.”

If we only assume the original conclusion as being true, then this is truly a paradox, but it is not. If we show that Cretans do not lie all of the time then we are not required to reach the high bar that “all Cretans are honest”, simply that the Cretan making the assertion has made a false statement or is, instead, the liar.

In sum, our solution in avoiding falling into the thinking of the faulty or dishonest Cretan is not to accept the premises as they have been presented to us, but to use our ability to reason out the premises and to look at the world as it is as a “reality check.” The paradox is not truly a paradox, and the assertion is false.

(Note that I have explained this resolution without going into the philosophical details of the original syllogism, the mathematics, and an inquiry on the detailed assumptions. For a fuller discussion of liar’s paradoxes I recommend this link.)

Why Care About the Paradox?

We see versions of the paradox used all of the time. This includes the use of ad hominem attacks on people, that is, charges of guilt by association with an idea, a place, an ethnic group, or another person. “Person X is a liar (or his/her actions are suspect or cannot be trusted) because they adhere to Y idea, group, or place.” Oftentimes these attacks are joined with insulting or demeaning catchphrases and (especially racial or ethnic) slurs.

What we attribute to partisanship or prejudice or bias often uses this underlying type of thinking. It is a simplification born of ignorance and all simplifications are a form of evil in the world. This assertion was best articulated by Albert Camus in his book The Plague.

“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.”

Our own times are not much different in its challenges than what Camus faced during the rise of fascism in Europe, for fascism’s offspring have given rise to a new generation that has insinuated itself into people’s minds.

Aside from my expertise in technology and the military arts and sciences, the bulk of my formal academic education is as an historian and political scientist. The world is currently in the grip of a plague that eschews education and Camus’ clear-sightedness in favor of materialism, ethnic hatred, nativisim, anti-intellectualism, and ideological propaganda.

History is replete with similar examples, both large and small, of this type of thinking which should teach us that this is an aspect of human character wired into our brains that requires eternal vigilance to guard against. Such examples as the Spanish Inquisition, the Reformation and Counter Reformation, the French Revolution, the defense of slavery in the American Civil War and the subsequent terror of Jim Crow, 18th and 19th century imperialism, apartheid after the Boer War, the disaster of the First World War, the Russian Revolutions, the history of anti-Jewish pogroms and the Holocaust, the rise of Fascism and Nazism, Stalinism, McCarthyism in the United States, Mao and China’s Cultural Revolution, Castro’s Cuba, Pinochet’s Chile, the Pathet Lao, the current violence and intolerance borne of religious fundamentalism–and the list can go on–teaches us that our only salvation and survival as a species lies in our ability to overcome ignorance and self-delusion.

We come upon more pedestrian examples of this thinking all of the time. As Joseph Conrad wrote in Heart of Darkness, “The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.”

We must perform this vigilance first on ourselves–and it is a painful process because it shatters the self-image that is necessary for us to continue from day-to-day: that narrative thread that connects the events of our existence and that guides our actions as best and in as limited ways that they can be guided, without falling into the abyss of nihilism. Only knowledge, and the attendant realization of the necessary components of human love, acceptance, empathy, sympathy, and community–that is understanding–the essential connections that make us human–can overcome the darkness that constantly threatens to envelope us. But there is something more.

The birth of the United States was born on the premise that the practical experiences of history and its excesses could be guarded against and such “checks and balances” would be woven, first, into the thread of its structure, and then, into the thinking of its people. This is the ideal, and it need not be said that, given that it was a construction of flawed men, despite their best efforts at education and enlightenment compared to the broad ignorance of their time, these ideals for many continued to be only that. This ideal is known as the democratic ideal.

Semantics Matter

It is one that is under attack as well. We often hear the argument against it dressed up in academic clothing as being “only semantics” on the difference between a republic and a democracy. But as I have illustrated regarding the Epimenides Paradox, semantics matter.

For the democratic ideal is about self-government, which was a revolutionary concept in the 18th century and remains one today, which is why it has been and continues to be under attack by authoritarians, oligarchs, dictators, and factions pushing their version of the truth as they define it. But it goes further than than a mechanical process of government.

The best articulation of democracy in its American incarnation probably was written by the philosopher and educator John Dewey in his essay On Democracy. Democracy, says Dewey, is more than a special political form: it is a way of life, social and individual, that allows for the participation of every mature human being in forming the values that regulate society toward the twin goals of ensuring the general social welfare and full development of human beings as individuals.

While what we call intelligence be distributed in unequal amounts, it is the democratic faith that it is sufficiently general so that each individual has something to contribute, whose value can be assessed only as enters into the final pooled intelligence constituted by the contributions of all. Every authoritarian scheme, on the contrary, assumes that its value may be assessed by some prior principle, if not of family and birth or race and color or possession of material wealth, then by the position and rank a person occupies in the existing social scheme. The democratic faith in equality is the faith that each individual shall have the chance and opportunity to contribute whatever he is capable of contributing and that the value of his contribution be decided by its place and function in the organized total of similar contributions, not on the basis of prior status of any kind whatever.

In such a society there is no place for “I heard from a Cretan that all Cretans lie.” For democracy to work, however, requires not only vigilance but a dedication to education that is further dedicated to finding knowledge, however inconvenient or unpopular that knowledge may turn out to be. The danger has always been in lying to ourselves, and allowing ourselves to be seduced by good liars.

Note: This post has been updated for grammar and for purposes of clarity from the original.

While the excitement and emotions of this past election work themselves out in the populace at large, as a writer and contributor to the use of predictive analytics, I find the discussion about “where the polls went wrong” to be of most interest. This is an important discussion, because the most reliable polling organizations–those that have proven themselves out by being right consistently on a whole host of issues since most of the world moved to digitization and the Internet of Things in their daily lives–seemed to be dead wrong in certain of their predictions. I say certain because the polls were not completely wrong.

For partisans who point to Brexit and polling in the U.K., I hasten to add that this is comparing apples to oranges. The major U.S. polling organizations that use aggregation and Bayesian modeling did not poll Brexit. In fact, there was one reliable U.K. polling organization that did note two factors: one was that the trend in the final days was toward Brexit, and the other is that the final result was based on turnout, where greater turnout favored the “stay” vote.

But aside from these general details, this issue is of interest in project management because, unlike national and state polling, where there are sufficient numbers to support significance, at the micro-microeconomic level of project management we deal with very small datasets that expand the range of probable results. This is not an insignificant point that has been made time-and-time again over the years, particularly given single-point estimates using limited time-phased data absent a general model that provides insight into what are the likeliest results. This last point is important.

As of this writing Clinton sits at about +1.8% nationally, the votes are still coming in and continue to confirm her popular vote lead, currently standing at about 300,000 votes. Of the polls cited, Rasmussen was the closest to the final result. Virtually every other poll, however, except IBD/TIPP, was within the margin of error.

The polling that was off in predicting the election were those that aggregated polls along with state polls, adjusted polling based on non-direct polling indicators, and/or then projected the chances of winning based on the probable electoral vote totals. This is where things were off.

Among the most popular of these sites is Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog. Silver established his bonafides in 2008 by picking winners with incredible accuracy, particularly at the state level, and subsequently in his work at the New York Times which continued to prove the efficacy of data in predictive analytics in everything from elections to sports. Since that time his significant reputation has only grown.

What Silver does is determine the probability of an electoral outcome by using poll results that are transparent in their methodologies and that have a high level of confidence. Silver’s was the most conservative of these types of polling organizations. On the eve of the election Silver gave Clinton a 71% chance of winning the presidency. The other organizations that use poll aggregation, poll normalization, or other adjusting indicators (such as betting odds, financial market indicators, and political science indicators) include the New York Times Upshot (Clinton 85%), HuffPost (Clinton 98%), PredictWise (Clinton 89%), Princeton (Clinton >99%), DailyKos (Clinton 92%), Cook (Lean Clinton), Roth (Lean Clinton), and Sabato (Lean Clinton).

In order to understand what probability means in this context, the polls were using both bottom-up state polling to track the electoral college combined with national popular vote polling. But keep in mind that, as Nate Silver wrote over the course of the election, that just a 17% chance of winning “is the same as your chances of losing a “game” of Russian roulette”. Few of us would take that bet, particularly since the result of losing the game is finality.

Still, except for FiveThirtyEight, none of the other methods using probability got it right. None, except FiveThirtyEight, left enough room for drawing the wrong chamber. Also, in fairness, the Cook, Rothenberg, and Sabato projections also left enough room to see a Trump win if the state dominoes fell right.

The place that the models failed were in the states of Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In particular, even with Florida (result Trump +1.3%) and North Carolina (result Trump +3.8%), Trump would not win if Pennsylvania (result Trump +1.2%), Michigan (result Trump +.3), and Wisconsin (result Trump +1.0)–supposed Clinton firewall states–were not breached. So what happened?

Among the possible factors are the effect of FBI Director Comey’s public intervention, which was too soon to the election to register in the polling; ineffective polling methods in rural areas (garbage in-garbage out), bad state polling quality, voter suppression, purging, and restrictions (of the battleground states this includes Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Iowa), voter turnout and enthusiasm (aside from the factors of voter suppression), and the inability to peg the way the high level of undecided voters would go at the last minute.

In hindsight, the national polls were good predictors. The sufficiency of the data in drawing significance, and the high level of confidence in their predictive power is borne out by the final national vote totals.

I think that where the polling failed in the projections of the electoral college was from the inability to take into account non-statistical factors, selection bias, and that the state poll models probably did not accurately reflect the electorate in the states given the lessons from the primaries. Along these lines, I believe that if pollsters look at the demographics in the respective primaries that they will find that both voter enthusiasm and composition provide the corrective to their projections. Given these factors, the aggregators and probabilistic models should all have called the race too close to call. I think both Monte Carlo and Bayesian methods in simulations will bear this out.

For example, as one who also holds a political science degree and so will put on that hat. It is a basic tenet that negative campaigns depress voter participation. This causes voters to select the lesser of two evils (or lesser of two weevils). Voter participation was down significantly due to a unprecedentedly negative campaign. When this occurs, the most motivated base will usually determine the winner in an election. This is why midterm elections are so volatile, particularly after a presidential win that causes a rebound of the opposition party. Whether this trend continues with the reintroduction of gerrymandering is yet to be seen.

What all this points to from a data analytics perspective is that one must have a model to explain what is happening. Statistics by themselves, while correct a good bit of the time, will cause one to be overconfident of a result based solely on the numbers and simulations that give the false impression of solidity, particularly when one is in a volatile environment. This is known as reification. It is a fallacious way of thinking. Combined with selection bias and the absence of a reasonable narrative model–one that introduces the social interactions necessary to understand the behavior of complex adaptive systems–one will often find that invalid results result.

While doing stuff and living life (which seems to take me away from writing) there were a good many interesting things written on project management. The very insightful Dave Gordon at his blog, The Practicing IT Project Manager, provides a useful weekly list of the latest contributions to the literature that are of note. If you haven’t checked it out please do so–I recommend it highly.

While I was away Dave posted to an interesting link on the concept of sustainability in project management. Along those lines three PM professionals have proposed a Sustainability Manifesto for Projects. As Dave points out in his own post on the topic, it rests on three basic principles:

Benefits realization over metrics limited to time, scope, and cost

Value for many over value of money

The long-term impact of our projects over their immediate results

These are worthy goals and no one needs to have me rain on their parade. I would like to see these ethical principles, which is what they really are, incorporated into how we all conduct ourselves in business. But then there is reality–the “is” over the “ought.”

For example, Dave and I have had some correspondence regarding the nature of the marketplace in which we operate through this blog. Some time ago I wrote a series of posts here, here, and here providing an analysis of the markets in which we operate both in macroeconomic and microeconomic terms.

This came in response to one my colleagues making the counterfactual assertion that we operate in a “free market” based on the concept of “private enterprise.” Apparently, such just-so stories are lies we have to tell ourselves to make the hypocrisy of daily life bearable. But, to bring the point home, in talking about the concept of sustainability, what concrete measures will the authors of the manifesto bring to the table to counter the financialization of American business that has occurred of the past 35 years?

For example, the news lately has been replete with stories of companies moving plants from the United States to Mexico. This despite rising and record corporate profits during a period of stagnating median working class incomes. Free trade and globalization have been cited as the cause, but this involves more hand waving and the invocation of mantras, rather than analysis. There has also been the predictable invocations of the Ayn Randian cult and the pseudoscience* of Social Darwinism. Those on the opposite side of the debate characterize things as a morality play, with the public good versus greed being the main issue. All of these explanations miss their mark, some more than others.

An article setting aside a few myths was recently published by Jonathan Rothwell at Brookings, which came to me via Mark Thoma’s blog, in the article, “Make elites compete: Why the 1% earn so much and what to do about it”. Rothwell looks at the relative gains of the market over the last 40 years and finds that corporate profits, while doing well, have not been the driver of inequality that Robert Reich and other economists would have it be. In looking at another myth that has been promulgated by Greg Mankiw, he finds that the rewards of one’s labors is not related to any special intelligence or skill. On the contrary, one’s entry into the 1% is actually related to what industry one chooses to enter, regardless of all other factors. This disparity is known as a “pay premium”. As expected, petroleum and coal products, financial instruments, financial institutions, and lawyers, are at the top of the pay premium. What is not, against all expectations of popular culture and popular economic writing, is the IT industry–hardware, software, etc. Though they are the poster children of new technology, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg, and others are the exception to the rule in an industry that is marked by a 90% failure rate. Our most educated and talented people–those in science, engineering, the arts, and academia–are poorly paid–with negative pay premiums associated with their vocations.

The financialization of the economy is not a new or unnoticed phenomenon. Kevin Phillips, in Wealth and Democracy, which was written in 2003, noted this trend. There have been others. What has not happened as a result is a national discussion on what to do about it, particularly in defining the term “sustainability”.

For those of us who have worked in the acquisition community, the practical impact of financialization and de-industrialization have made logistics challenging to say the least. As a young contract negotiator and Navy Contracting Officer, I was challenged to support the fleet when any kind of fabrication or production was involved, especially in non-stocked machined spares of any significant complexity or size. Oftentimes my search would find that the company that manufactured the items was out of business, its pieces sold off during Chapter 11, and most of the production work for those items still available done seasonally out of country. My “out” at the time–during the height of the Cold War–was to take the technical specs, which were paid for and therefore owned by the government, to one of the Navy industrial activities for fabrication and production. The skillset for such work was still fairly widespread, supported by the quality control provided by a fairly well-unionized and trade-based workforce–especially among machinists and other skilled workers.

Given the new and unique ways judges and lawyers have applied privatized IP law to items financed by the public, such opportunities to support our public institutions and infrastructure, as I was able, have been largely closed out. Furthermore, the places to send such work, where possible, have also gotten vanishingly smaller. Perhaps digital printing will be the savior for manufacturing that it is touted to be. What it will not do is stitch back the social fabric that has been ripped apart in communities hollowed out by the loss of their economic base, which, when replaced, comes with lowered expectations and quality of life–and often shortened lives.

In the end, though, such “fixes” benefit a shrinkingly few individuals at the expense of the democratic enterprise. Capitalism did not exist when the country was formed, despite the assertion of polemicists to link the economic system to our democratic government. Smith did not write his pre-modern scientific tract until 1776, and much of what it meant was years off into the future, and its relevance given what we’ve learned over the last 240 years about human nature and our world is up for debate. What was not part of such a discussion back then–and would not have been understood–was the concept of sustainability. Sustainability in the study of healthy ecosystems usually involves the maintenance of great diversity and the flourishing of life that denotes health. This is science. Economics, despite Keynes and others, is still largely rooted in 18th and 19th century pseudoscience.

I know of no fix or commitment to a sustainability manifesto that includes global, environmental, and social sustainability that makes this possible short of a major intellectual, social or political movement willing to make a long-term commitment to incremental, achievable goals toward that ultimate end. Otherwise it’s just the mental equivalent to camping out in Zuccotti Park. The anger we note around us during this election year of 2016 (our year of discontent) is a natural human reaction to the end of an idea, which has outlived its explanatory power and, therefore, its usefulness. Which way shall we lurch?

The Sustainability Manifesto for Projects, then, is a modest proposal. It may also simply be a sign of the times, albeit a rational one. As such, it leaves open a lot of questions, and most of these questions cannot be addressed or determined by the people to which it is targeted: project managers, who are usually simply employees of a larger enterprise. People behave as they are treated–to the incentives and disincentives presented to them, oftentimes not completely apparent on the conscious level. Thus, I’m not sure if this manifesto hits its mark or even the right one.

*This term is often misunderstood by non-scientists. Pseudoscience means non-science, just as alternative medicine means non-medicine. If any of the various hypotheses of pseudoscience are found true, given proper vetting and methodology, that proposition would simply be called science. Just as alternative methods of treatment, if found effective and consistent, given proper controls, would simply be called medicine.

To start out the year 2016 I’ve decided to write about something that has stuck in my craw since the issue first came about. I find it galling, really, to have to write about something of this sort in the new year of 2016 but it is there nonetheless and I cannot in good conscience not write about it.

The topic at hand is the questioning by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia during oral arguments in the affirmative action case, Fisher vs. University of Texas at Austin. His comments are well documented but they are worth recounting, only because this line of thinking is shared by a significant proportion of the population. Below is the full exchange begun by Gregory Garre, the attorney for UT.

Garre: “If this Court rules that the University of Texas can’t consider race, or if it rules that universities that consider race have to die a death of a thousand cuts for doing so, we know exactly what’s going to happen…Experience tells us that.” (When the use of race has been dropped elsewhere) “diversity plummeted.”

Scalia: “There are those who contend that it does not benefit African­-Americans to — ­ to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less­-advanced school, a less ­—­ a slower­-track school where they do well. One of ­­— one of the briefs pointed out that ­­— that most of the — ­­most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas. They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re ­­— that they’re being pushed ahead in ­—­ in classes that are too ­­— too fast for them. I’m just not impressed by the fact that —­­ that the University of Texas may have fewer (black students). Maybe it ought to have fewer.”

Garre: “This court heard and rejected that argument, with respect, Justice Scalia….frankly, I don’t think the solution to the problems with student body diversity can be to set up a system in which not only are minorities going to separate schools, they’re going to inferior schools.”

I want to get back to Scalia’s comments, but first it is useful to go over the facts of this case, which seem to barely warrant a review by the Supreme Court. UT admits the overwhelming majority of its students based on the Top Ten Program, that is, if you graduated from a Texas high school within the top 10% of your class, you were admitted if you applied. In the year that Fisher applied, 92% of the entering class gained admission on that basis. For the other 8% of seats that were open, as Vox explained, other factors were taken into consideration including based on a “holistic” process. Two scores were given from this process: one for essays, leadership activities, and background, which included race; and the other based on grades and test scores. The overwhelming majority of students accepted for admission under this process were white. Given that the inclusion of race as a factor was not a discriminatory quota, there is little here except to assert, in general, that any consideration of race is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The majority of legal analysis of the Fisher case itself has centered on Grutter vs. Bollinger, mostly because it is the Supreme Court’s latest statement on the issue of affirmative action. In this case, the Court ruled that University of Michigan Law School did not discriminate when taking race into account among a number of other factors in order to ensure a diverse student body, especially in including previously disenfranchised and excluded minorities, as long as there was a compelling interest in doing so and it passed the definition of “strict scrutiny.”

Given that the Court attempts to maintain continuity and precedent (known by the Latin term stare decisis), the wellspring for this decision was really based on the case of University of California Regents v. Bakkefrom 1978. There are two competing constitutional interests at play according to the majority opinion written by Justice Lewis Powell. One is to ensure that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment apply not only to protect the interests of African-Americans in “dialing back the clock to 1868” in a United States that no longer resembles the one when the amendment was passed, but to all persons. The other is under the academic freedom afforded schools and colleges under the First Amendment known as the “four essential freedoms.”

Forgetting in his argument that Justice Powell was a good constitutional judge but a poor historian, this other interest may come as a surprise to those not familiar with these competing interests. This is not surprising given the partisan–and many racist–arguments against affirmative action. Powell invokes two previous cases in outlining the four essential freedoms. He writes:

“`It is the business of a university to provide that atmosphere which is most conductive to speculation, experiment and creation. It is an atmosphere in which there prevail “the four essential freedoms” of a university—to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.'” Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U. S. 234, 263 (1957) (concurring in result).

Our national commitment to the safeguarding of these freedoms within university communities was emphasized in Keyshian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589, 603 (1967):

“Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment . . . . The Nation’s future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth `out of a multitude of tongues, [rather] than through any kind of authoritative selection.’ United States v. Associated Press, 523 F. Supp. 362, 372.”

What Powell indicated was that, given these conflicting rights (given that no right is absolute), that when the university takes racial factors into account into admissions that there needs to be both a substantial state interest in ensuring diversity, and that strict scrutiny must be applied to such racial or ethnic factoring. The first time around, when the Supreme Court remanded the Fisher case back to the appellate court in 2013, the majority indicated that while not a quota–and hence not an outright violation of the Equal Protection Clause–that the court had not applied strict scrutiny in determining whether UT had established a substantial state interest. Or, at least, that’s what it seemed given that the logic which comes down by the Roberts Court is oftentimes sophomoric.

It is important to note that the UT Top Ten Program has increased diversity. The reason is that the top ten percent, regardless of school, qualify for the program. This effect is rooted in discrimination in housing patterns that extend back to the late 19th century when, first, Jim Crow laws were passed in the southern states (such as Texas) to essentially re-enslave and disenfranchise the freedmen. Many people will be surprised to know that these laws continued in force well into the 1960s, the last case being brought to overturn the last vestiges of the race laws in the mid-1970s. Then in the north beginning in the 1920s, first, local ordinance, and then, when those were struck down, restrictive covenants were applied to keep African Americans and other minority and ethnic groups out of white, Anglo-Saxon protestant neighborhoods. When restrictive covenants were eventually overturned, real estate brokers and bankers applied the process of “redlining.” That is, home loans and mortgages were made harder to qualify for or denied to certain racial and ethnic groups. The map was lined in red to keep people in their “place.” Ostensibly, this practice was outlawed with the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, but the practice has continued to this day. Furthermore, for most of our history African Americans have had to pay a premium for better housing that otherwise would have gone for a lower market price. It was racial fear and manipulation that caused white flight in giving the impression of falling real estate value when African-Americans were allowed to move into a predominately white community. The sordid history behind this phenomena are amply documented in the National Book Award winning history, Arc of Justice by historian Kevin Boyle.

When one hears political and opinion leaders assert that the housing crisis was caused by diversity targets in sub-prime loans they are not only stating a counterfactual and providing bad economic analysis, but are also engaged in race baiting. It is redlining that caused minorities to be most vulnerable when the bubble burst because they tended to pay usurious interest rates–or were funneled into subprime balloon mortgages–in order to derive the same benefits of home ownership as other groups, who were afforded more reasonable financing. Given that most of these are working people living paycheck to paycheck, it takes no great insight to know that they will be the first to default during an unusually severe economic downturn.

Thus, when one considers that most public school funding is derived from real estate property taxes and that the average homeowner based on a 2013 survey stays in their home 13 years (with the historical average varying between 10 and 16 years since 1997), the effects of previously discriminatory practices–and school funding, as well as socio-economic and racial composition–depending the rate of turnover in any particular neighborhood, can last a generation or more. Despite political arguments to the contrary, monies spent on schools plays a significant role in student achievement. It would have been appropriate for Justice Powell in Bakke to have at least acknowledged this history as well as the history of new immigrants and minorities that he invoked in his decision in expressing his concern about turning back the clock.

It is important to state clearly that there is no doubt things have improved despite Bakke, and that it was probably a largely well-conceived adjudication. Despite claims to the contrary, the Great Society and Civil Rights reforms of the 1960s have eliminated the worst de jure and de facto day-to-day indignities, fear of violence, discrimination, and denial of human rights that African-Americans lived under well into the late 20th century. Opportunities have opened up and it is amazing that over the last 50 years that we can find young African-Americans who have never suffered the indignity of bias or discrimination due to the color of their skin. But as with the recent problems in policing, criminal justice, and the subtle racism that exists in job selection and opportunities, among other issues, it is apparent that we still have work to do for us to fully overcome our history of slavery, Jim Crow, racism, discrimination, and racial terrorism. For when one looks back, the fact of the matter is that much of this country–and the basis of its wealth–was built on the backs of African American slavery and oppression. Without the African-American experience, American culture is indecipherable. New immigrants, when taking advantage of the inherited advantages of being American also, unknowing to them, inherit the history that made those advantages possible.

But now back to Justice Scalia’s remarks. Had Scalia restricted himself to the constitutional issues addressed by Powell in Bakke, there would be no concern. But this is not what the members of this SCOTUS are about. In the case of Scalia, his remarks would have been at home in the post-Reconstruction south in the late 19th and early 20th century, along with Spencer’s Social Darwinism and eugenics. This was the period that endorsed separate but “equal” facilities for African-Americans. Scalia seems to be suggesting a modern version of it in higher education. But we have seen these ideas invoked fairly recently elsewhere, particularly in the discredited work of Herrnstein and Murray in publishing their work The Bell Curve. His comments are what is called “Begging the Question.” Scalia “begs the question” in assuming in his remarks that African-Americans are not qualified generally for UT, and that they do not possess the mental or educational skills to succeed there. His remarks also reveal someone who thinks in terms of hierarchy and aristocracy, that there are levels of human fitness and superiority, which also underlies such concepts as “makers” and “takers.”

Apologists in academia and elsewhere have attempted to temper the justice’s words by invoking the concept of mismatch in college admissions. It is often referred to as a “theory” but that would elevate it to have an authority that it does not possess. It is Cargo Cult Social Science based on loosely correlated statistics that provides a veneer of respectability to those who still seek to explain inequality in a society that claims fancifully to be meritocratic, or egalitarian, or a land of opportunity, but which is not really any of these. But that is not the underlying assumption in Scalia’s remarks. He begins with calling out African Americans (and restricts himself to African Americans among minorities) and then goes from there. Further studies on mismatch (link below) show that it is a common phenomenon which affects all racial and ethnic groups. No system is perfect, and especially not one conceived by society or academia.

But even putting aside the racist assumptions of Justice Scalia, does the mismatch concept even pass the “so-what?” test? What if one is thrown into a situation for which they are poorly prepared? In real life we call this “sink or swim.” Does it really do harm? There are all kinds of casuistry put forth but, despite assertions to the contrary, the facts are not conclusive.

To give but one famous historical example that undermines this bit of sophistry, the fact that General Lee graduated second in his West Point class and U.S. Grant graduated in the bottom half no doubt influenced them later in life. Lee was able to defeat with great skill generals who were unused to defeat and disappointment, and routed them from the field. But his supreme confidence in his abilities caused his utter failure at Gettysburg. Grant, on the other hand, who experienced failure both as a civilian and on the battlefield, grew unafraid of it and succeeded in the end. The fact that someone experiences a setback or must work hard in order to succeed is not such a bad thing. It is how the individual reacts in the face of disappointment or long odds that we call character. It is the standard means of training Naval officers at sea and why mentoring is so important. (Only puffed up college professors don’t feel that their job is teaching). Yes, the world is a big place; yes, there are things you don’t know, but absent a severe learning or emotional disability you can learn them.

But seeing this self-evident insight would assume rational thought and evidence. For example, many of the characteristics attributed to African-Americans in The Bell Curve have since been overcome, such as significantly rising math and reading scores on standardized tests that are closing the gap with white achievement. If these were innate or unsolvable deficiencies how was it possible that public policy is alleviating the gap? Does it harm African-Americans to be challenged to do so? Given the disreputable history of race in America what is more likely: that African-Americans are innately less likely to succeed at UT (and increasing numbers entered under the Top Ten Program), or that the history of unequal educational opportunity deserves to be addressed in the most equitable and constitutional manner? Or that unequal treatment and the socio-economic effects of economic discrimination, which still exist, have a great effect on minorities that require a reasoned assessment of the individual in taking into account mitigating circumstances, including racial or ethnic background, in college admissions for those on the fence?

That a Supreme Court justice can voice such stupidity and bias in the year 2015 is evidence enough that there is something wrong with our judicial system. I beg to differ with the proposition voiced by the late Senator Roman Hruska in defending Nixon’s appointment of G. Harold Carswell to the Supreme Court (which was rejected), that mediocrity deserves representation on the court. While we can’t always find a Brandeis, Cardozo, or Frankfurter (or a Holmes, Brennan, Black, Story, or Warren), we can at least attempt to do so. Unfortunately we are stuck with a Scalia and his ilk.

Turning to political science again, Kevin O’Rourke has an important article regarding the democratic deficit and types of legitimacy in Critical Quarterly, particularly in light of the events surrounding the Greek crisis. He cites the late political scientist Peter Mair’s book, Ruling the Void, as providing a solid framework for understanding what is happening in Europe, and to some extent within all democracies as a result of wealth and power concentration among an increasingly transnational economic elite.

The issue that O’Rourke tackles based on Mair’s insights, is one of democratic legitimacy. For economists and financiers who seem to have (I would argue) taken an illegitimately outsized role in determining what is good for Greece, even if Greece disagrees, the dichotomy here seems to be between what has been called input vs. output legitimacy. I understand what he is saying here, but in political science “legitimacy” is not the same as “democratic legitimacy” and, in the end I think, this is his point.

O’Rourke, an economist himself, tackles how using this argument, particularly in regard to output legitimacy, has been hijacked so that concerns about distribution have been stripped out of the definition by the application of technocrat-speak. I have a backlog of items for the Devil’s Phraseology from “Structural Reform” to other euphemisms for, essentially, screwing working people over, especially right now if they are Greek, Italian, Spanish, or Irish.

His article is important in tracing the subtle transformation of legitimacy over time. For those unfamiliar with this terminology, legitimacy in this sense–if you remember nothing else but your Lincoln or Jefferson–in democratic societies is properly derived by the people. This concept, which can be measured on the input side, is reinforced by processes and institutions that support it. So clean elections which seek to maximize participation of the adult population; freedoms that support human rights, particularly those concerning speech, free association, and free movement; institutions that are largely responsive to the democratic will but which possess limitations to prevent the denial of human rights; and an independent judiciary that metes out justice based on due process; the absence of corruption, undue influence, unequal treatment, or graft in these institutions, etc. are all indicators of “legitimacy.” In the context of the European debate this is known as “input” legitimacy.

Then there is “output” legitimacy. This is the type of legitimacy on which the EU rests, since it obviously–especially since the last Greek referendum on the terms of the Troika’s terms–doesn’t seem to be based on any kind of “input” legitimacy. Here legitimacy is based on a utilitarian measure–the ability of the EU to raise the aggregate euro value at any one time. This is the “rising tide lifts all boats” trope. Nice imagery, what with the JFK connection and all, but the rules of the game and economic environment have changed since 1963 to the extent that the analogy no longer applies. A rising tide lifts all boats only if everyone has a stake in the tide rising. Feel free to add any additional analogies now that we are beginning to understand the effect of rising tides on coastal cities as the earth warms. An actual rising tide certainly didn’t do anyone in NOLA’s Lower Ninth and Lakeside neighborhoods any favors, but we do know that it impacted people residing in different economic strata differently.

Furthermore, output legitimacy as a utilitarian project sounds a lot like “we made the trains run on time”. Furthermore, it wasn’t all that long ago that more than half of Europe suffered under authoritarian regimes. Output legitimacy, I would argue, by definition is the opposite of democratic legitimacy, not one of two types of democratic legitimacy. As O’Rourke points out, one cannot take politics out of policy, so the way in which decisions are made is important in defining the type and level of legitimacy.

Post-1989 generations have not had to come to an understanding of the fact that even oppressive regimes can possess political legitimacy that is sufficient for them to survive. From an historical standpoint, all of those German people in the streets chanting “Heil Hitler” weren’t doing so at gun point. The block captains and those others who denounced family members in the old Eastern Block countries largely acted independently and voluntarily. Many Russians today pine for the days under the old Soviet Union and have a leader in Putin that channels that nostalgia. Autocratic and authoritarian regimes simply possess legitimacy through institutions and processes that are more restrictive than those found in democratic societies, but which rests on elites, centers of power, and pluralities that allow them to function.

Thus, whether the EU will admit it publicly or not, one need only do a Google search to see that this is a generally recognized issue that the European countries seem unwilling or unable to address. The recent charging of Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek minister, of treason at the instigation of Greek and European elites raises the ante and strips whatever remaining veil there was to hide the anti-democratic roots of the Greek crisis. Apparently the 60% of the Greek people who voted “No” to the Troika were also traitors.

That this is happening is Greece is also problematic due to its geographical location in the eastern Mediterranean and its fairly recent transition to democratic processes and institutions. De-legitimization of democracies is an all too familiar event in the history of the European continent and can only lead to radicalization, especially given the pain being inflicted on the Greek people. What Europe’s technocrats have done is turn an economic recession and market failure–that could have been ameliorated and solved given the proper solutions learned by hard experience from the 1930s and immediately following the Second World War–rejected those methods and, as a result, though obstinance, tyrannical actions, corruption, and greed, have created a political and economic disaster that threatens the legitimacy of the EU.

The recent events in Greece and their ramifications for the European project have been the subject of a good many blogs and news articles lately. From an economic perspective the most noteworthy are those by Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, Dean Baker, Yanis Varoufakis who was on the ground as Greece’s Finance Minister, and Joseph Stiglitz, among others.

If one were to read the news in the manner of the U.S. press through its sources of record: The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, not to mention the major news networks with CNN thrown in (avoiding avowedly polemical sources like Fox, MSNBC, and the Huffington Post), one would think that the Greek issue is one caused by a profligate country that borrowed a bit too much and allowed Greeks to live over their heads. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The bottom line is that Greece and the EU decided to bail out the banks and investors who crossed the line in investing in junk paper by using public funds. Sound familiar? Think a Eurozone TARP. But in the case of the EU the banks and bad paper investment houses–the inmates in this scenario–run the asylum. With the constant drumbeat from our own oligarchs we have become as a people brainwashed to think that investors and creditors have a right to their money. Our own more draconian bankruptcy laws imposed by the last financial industry-tainted Congress institutionalized many of these attitudes in law. But this has not always not been the case and is not part of our legal or economic traditions. It is certainly not anything like what Adam Smith had in mind.

The operational term in this case is “moral hazard.” The rhetoric of the moneyed interests and their armies of lawyers have deftly tried to invert the meaning of the concept, but as Steve Waldman clearly explains in his excellent interfluidity blog, “moral hazard” is a concept that overwhelmingly falls on investors and creditors. It means, quite simply, that you as an investor are responsible for where you put your money at risk–and that risk includes it being completely lost. There are no guarantees. This was the original rationale of Glass-Steagall: it was accepted that regular working people don’t have the information, time or resources to place their funds, which are meant for savings, under moral hazard. Same goes for things like the Social Security Trust Fund. Play with your own “play” money if you have it, but guaranteed deposits and retirement pensions are off-limits since they are backed by the sovereign currency. Seed corn is not open to being manipulated by cheap paper–that is, until Glass-Steagall was repealed.

The European condition is a bit more complicated only because the EU has never had a consistent separation between its financial elites and civic institutions, given the differences in national traditions and political systems. But one should be able to clearly see the connection between what is happening in Europe within the EU and in other places around the world: the attack on democratic legitimacy by oligarchs and economic elites.

As Joe Stiglitz points out in the post cited above, Greece–emerging from years of autocratic rule and third world-like conditions–was doing quite well economically until the financial bubble burst across the developed western world. Many of the banks that invested in hyper-inflated Greek real estate and other development projects were situated in other countries. The EU under the Euro project is a currency union, and under the Maastricht Treaty that formed this union there were some economic harmonization rules required, mostly pushed by Germany and France, but there is no lender of last resort, no central banking authority equivalent to our Federal Reserve, no centralized budget authority, nor political or cultural ties that would keep old ethnic or nationalist conflicts from flaring up in a crisis. As Waldman explains, what these other countries did–in particular Germany–was to bail out the banks and investment houses making the debt on these bad investments public obligations. This sleight of hand politicized what should otherwise should have simply been written off bad investments. If the Germans wanted to have their own TARP they should have done so. But it was so much easier to push the consequences onto the Greeks given their weaker position in the EU.

Jared Bernstein in his Washington Post article following the Greek “no” vote quoted an unnamed German economist asserting: “How do you think the people of Manhattan would like bailing out Texas?” As Krugman rejoined upon reading the article, Manhattan (and other areas of the country) do that all the time as a matter of course. It was done during the Savings & Loan crisis that was largely a Texas affair back in the late 1980s. Anyone who looks at the net benefits of federal tax payments and expenditures by state can see that the southeastern states–in particular those that made up the old Confederacy, including Texas, get more in federal benefits than they pay in. To Americans this is not a big deal–and my use of the term American to identify my countrymen is at the heart of the question. I don’t know anyone who in reality is a Floridian. Only buffoons and idiots identify themselves as Texans over their identity as Americans.

Here we tend to put resources where they are needed, hence the United States of America. More than two hundred years involving waves of immigrants, over one hundred and fifty years of increasing population mobility, and two major world wars and a cold one–two of these existential in nature–during the 20th century, not to mention 9-11, has militated against the old regionalism. It is not surprising that the assertion that displays such deep ignorance of our own system and society would come from a German economist. I mean this as no mean insult.

When I was on active duty as a young U.S. Naval officer I met a Scottish couple in Spain who worked at the U.K. embassy there. They were amazed by my nonchalance in moving my family from California to a home base in Virginia as part of my assignment. “Do you now identify yourself as a Virginian?” they asked. When I explained that–no–it was all part of the U.S., they explained that they would always identify themselves as Scots, and that within Scotland that people associated themselves with a particular village or region. This was almost 30 years ago, and I am told that such attitudes are changing, but it does point to a weakness in the “European” project, especially given that in the most recent U.K. parliamentary elections that the Scottish nationalist party was overwhelming elected to the House of Commons.

Given my own expertise in history and political science, my concern is directed more to the consequences of Greece capitulating to the EU’s economically and politically disastrous demands. Just ten days ago 60% of the Greek people voted against the conditions imposed by the EU, yet their parliament just approved a package that is punitive by any reasonable and objective measure. Even the IMF has belatedly–and in a largely dishonest manner which I can only explain as some type of EU face-saving approach–clearly stated that the conditions imposed are unsustainable.

The role of Germany is certainly one of the main issues in this condition. Given the way they handled the bad paper of their bankers, Merkel and her party have backed themselves into a corner. So they have done what all desperate politicians do–they have demonized the Greeks. This is all for mercenary purposes, of course, and without consideration for the long term consequences for both the Greek people and the EU. What they have done is show the contradictory fault lines in the entire “European” project. German Finance Minister Schaubel, by attempting to co-opt the Greek threat of a Euro exit by making such terms seem disastrous, has inadvertently made such an exit virtually inevitable. Greece, not wanting to be left out of “Europe” has just voted against its own best interests, its government never really having a strategy for a “Grexit” because they assumed that their negotiating partners were both rational and well-meaning. The government very well may fall as a result.

For what the Greek crisis has shown is that the European project under the Euro is neither a completely democratic one nor is it “European.” The elites in Brussels certainly felt that they had no obligation to consider the Greek referendum on the bailout terms. To them only the banks, the oligarchs, and the political survival of the political parties in the main assemblies of the nations that support them matter. The “democratic deficit” of the EU, in the words of the late historian Tony Judt, and the damage that it can cause, is now on full display. It is not yet clear what will happen, given the contradictory impulses of countries wanting to stay within the single market that “Europe” afford them, the cultural and psychological association to be part of the project, and the punishing loss of national autonomy and democratic legitimacy as the price that must be paid. (Aside from the economic depression and poverty conditions imposed by the EU as the Greeks follow the conditions imposed on them).

One final note: I can’t help but be impressed by the ideological arguments being used as a matter of course for “helping” the Greek people in the long run. As John Maynard Keynes noted, in the long run we are all dead. The tremendous amount of suffering imposed by the EU on the Greek people for their own long-term good sounds much like the fabrications of the old Communists of the former Eastern Block countries who inflicted all sorts of horrors on their own populations for the “long term” good of reaching the perfect socialist state. Now such arguments are deployed in favor of the perfect capitalist state. It is “reform” turned on its head, like “moral hazard.”

Starting out the new year with some additional notes on international affairs.

The reference in the title is from a comment from former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in once referring to the Soviet Union. Of course, as Tony Judt noted in his magisterial book Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, there are those missiles. Thus, this is a topic of concern to everyone, particularly in regard to the events surrounding Crimea and Ukraine. This past April I noted the threat implicit in Putin’s actions and the need for European solidarity in opposing his actions to maintain the peace and stability of the region. When combined with Russian violations of nuclear arms treaties this is cause for concern.

Since April much has happened, including measured sanctions by the European Union and the United States, to prevent the Russian Federation from leveraging its economic power to gain an advantage over Ukrainian sovereignty. In addition, the depressed state of the world economy, among other factors, has created an oil glut that has also reduced Russia’s ability to leverage its oil reserves against any countries that would oppose it. As a result, the ruble has taken a hit and Russia has made all of the wrong moves to bolster its currency.

On the middle point, certain notable voices here in the United States have pointed to an increase in oil production as the main cause but the numbers do not support this contention. Instead, a combination of factors: alternative energy production, more efficient fuel consumption, and a drop in consumer demand have all conspired to, well, act as a market is supposed to behave. Combine this with the refusal of major producers to reduce output to manipulate the market in order to prop up the price and you have what commodities do most often–rise and fall on the whims of the demand of the moment. I have no doubt that eventually the world economy will recover, but keep in mind that the very real threat of Global Warming will continue to drive societies to find alternatives to fossil fuel. That is, given that they continue to recognize the existential threat that it poses to humanity (aside from the dysfunctional geopolitics that fossil fuels seem to drive). In the meantime, seeing the handwriting on the wall, net exporters like Saudi Arabia have little incentive to reduce production when they can sell as much as possible and gain a larger share of the market against their competitors.

For the uninitiated like Fifth Column blogger Patrick Smith at Salon.com, who apparently only sees conspiracies and control of a kind that–well–actually exists in Putin’s Russia, this is known as market competition. Nary a peep from Mr. Smith has emanated lately (or from our own right wing plutocrats) about the Russian oligarch being a statesman running rings around our democratically-elected U.S. president or his decorated former U.S. Navy officer (and later antiwar activist) Secretary of State. Were it only possible for the state controlled Russian press to have the freedom to make such alternative observations of its own leadership in their country. Okay–enough sarcasm for today, but I think I made my point: mendacity and irrationality make for strange bedfellows.

Along these lines some interesting insights about Putin’s Russia have come out in the book entitled Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? by Karen Dawisha. This is a brave undertaking given that a lot of critical writing about Russia, apart from the abolition of a free press there, has been taken down from websites. This is not because of some mysterious ability on the part of Putin and his cronies but because of their immense international (until recently) financial power and the expensive lawyers that such money can buy. Cambridge University Press, for example, because of the U.K.’s lax libel laws, declined to publish the book. Thus, a U.S. publisher had to be found. In addition, Russia has bought off columnists and politicians around the world to muddy the waters about the reality of the regime. A very enlightening review of the book and the history surrounding it appears in The New York Review of Books by Washington Post and Slate columnist Anne Applebaum.

In summary, Dawisha’s book demonstrates that during the period when Gorbachev was desperately attempting to reform a crumbling and inefficient system that had plodded along under the Brezhnev doldrums, that KBG agents like Putin were moving Russian currency assets aboard in Europe with the intent of eventually using their economic leverage to retake the country when all of the hullaballoo blew over. Thus, rather than a failing attempt at liberalization and democracy, what we see is the reinstitution of authoritarian rule after a brief respite. The same old corrupt elites that had run the old Soviet Union under central planning are now simply wearing capitalist oligarch clothing. This probably explains why the Russian central bank is moving to bolster the ruble through higher interest rates, which will only exacerbate the economic collapse. But the general welfare is not their concern. It’s all about the value of Russian reserves and the economic leverage that such value and power lends to control.

Globalization has made this a small world, but one still fraught with dangers. For companies in my industry and policymakers here in the United States, I would recommend that a wall of separation be established from companies–particularly those technology companies in information systems–with ties to Russian oil and its oligarchs.